Permanent Capital Research
Arizona · Investment Research
We study who owns the world's irreplaceable cash-flow streams: royalties, real property, scarce economic rights, and durable infrastructure that depletes, produces, or stores value through full market cycles. We write for people who'd rather understand what they own than trade what they don't.
Our research draws on thirty-three years of investment management experience at Meixler Investment Management, Ltd. in Arizona, working with ranchers, loggers, retirees, and small business owners: down-to-earth people with common sense, a love for the land, and no patience for Wall Street's language.
For most of those years, that investment philosophy lived in two places: in portfolios managed by Meixler Investment Management and in conversations over fence lines and kitchen tables. The research happened, but it stayed internal: scribbled in notebooks, argued about on long drives, tested against decades of market cycles.
Permanent Capital Research is a separate company established to publish investment research. Our approach, rooted in real assets, replacement cost, per-share compounding, and a healthy respect for monetary history, deserves a body of work that can outlive any single individual. We are building a published research library, not managing client accounts on behalf of Meixler Investment Management.
We study who owns the world's irreplaceable cash-flow streams.
Revenue on every ounce and every barrel, without drilling a single well. The owner sits above the operating risk.
Land under infrastructure that cannot move, under contracts measured in decades.
Rights-of-way that can no longer be permitted, still moving molecules through every cycle.
An asset that grows back: biological compounding on land that isn't being made anymore.
Structural positions that collect on the movement of everything, maintained by necessity rather than fashion.
The scarcest economic right in the American West. Water flows downhill; the right to it does not expire.
Companies with the discipline to shrink their share count while the world chases growth.
We are not interested in narratives, momentum, factor models, or quarterly earnings surprises. We are interested in assets and economic rights that are scarce, durable, and difficult or impossible to recreate, along with the capital structures that determine who actually benefits from owning them. Own the stream, not the shovel.
The companies we study change. The questions evolve. But the philosophy behind our research rests on a set of ideas about money, credit, and real wealth. Understanding them is what separates conviction from speculation, and patience from stubbornness.
Gold is the only financial asset that is not simultaneously somebody else's liability. A dollar is a claim; paying a debt with dollars transfers the obligation, it doesn't extinguish it. When gold changes hands, the chain of claims ends. The modern system is debt all the way down. Gold stands outside that loop, which is why we study its role in preserving wealth.
Every currency drifts; gold holds relatively still across centuries. Price assets in gold rather than dollars and the illusion of credit-driven prosperity becomes visible. A house that "five-bagged" in nominal terms may have gone sideways in gold. The apparent wealth was the currency depreciating, not the asset appreciating.
Artificially cheap credit doesn't merely create boom and bust; it misallocates capital, building assets that cannot generate the income to service and maintain themselves. The boom feels prosperous, but the bust is the economy trying to tell the truth. Our research looks beyond the creatures of the credit cycle to what remains when the illusion fades: pipelines still moving molecules, royalties still collecting on every ounce.
Global trade has long been structured to extract cheap commodities from producers while middlemen skim the cream. Ranchers, loggers, and other producers live on the producing end of that equation every day. The royalty structure at the core of our research examines the position of the toll collector rather than the toll payer.
Rotating cattle to rest the pasture is Austrian capital theory made living. Planting orchards is the ultimate long-cycle investment: capital in the ground that grandchildren will harvest. An unencumbered ranch, paid for, with water and grass and cattle on it, does not care what the Federal Reserve does next Tuesday. It just sits there producing, and income that pays its own way means you are never a forced seller.
The Fortress Conclusion
That is why our research focuses on toll roads, not derivatives. Royalties, not leverage. Real assets, not financial engineering. Fortress balance sheets that owe nothing to nobody. Income that grows because the assets are irreplaceable, with enough cash to wait out any storm without ever being forced to sell the one thing you should not.
They are not slogans. They are the actual filters we use to evaluate every asset, every management team, and every capital structure we encounter.
Which businesses and assets can still be economically relevant in thirty to fifty years?
Growth without durability is a bonfire: heat and light until the fuel runs out. We look for assets that compound quietly over decades because their economic function is permanent: land produces, minerals deplete into revenue, infrastructure collects tolls, and water flows downhill.
What would it cost to recreate this today, and can it even be permitted?
We do not value businesses by earnings multiples. We value them by what it would cost to build them from scratch, in today's dollars, in today's permitting environment. Scarcity that cannot be manufactured on a spreadsheet is the most durable form of value we know.
Where can an owner earn without reinvesting, operating, or competing?
The highest-quality economic positions share one feature: someone else does the work, and you collect the check. The rancher who owns the mineral rights beneath his pasture earns twice: once from the grass and once from the gas. We look for that structure everywhere.
Who compounds per-share value quietly while others chase stories?
A shrinking share count, growing book value per share, and a management team that treats the balance sheet like a loaded rifle: handled with care, used with precision. These companies build wealth the way a well-managed ranch builds a herd: slowly, deliberately, without drama.
Which assets survive currency debasement and policy error?
Our research examines gold, mineral royalties, and companies such as Berkshire Hathaway through the lens of monetary change, not predictions about the next inflation print. If the currency loses half its purchasing power over twenty years, will this asset be worth more in real terms? We study the economic features that may support resilience through that transition and the risks that could undermine it.
No buy and sell signals. No price targets built to generate short-term action. When we publish a valuation range, it is a five-year framework grounded in replacement cost and stabilized cash flow, not a twelve-month catalyst thesis.
No banking relationships to protect, no deal flow to generate, no conference invitations to justify. Our only obligation is to the truth as we understand it and to the readers who trust us to tell it plainly.
We respect monetary history deeply, but we do not pretend to know what the Federal Reserve will do next quarter. Our macro awareness informs the assets we study. It does not turn our research into trading signals.
We are, simply, a research firm for people who think like owners. If you would rather understand what you own than trade what you don't, you are our reader.
Each dossier is designed to be evergreen, updated as facts change rather than replaced by next quarter's model. Over time, this becomes our intellectual property library: the body of work that defines how we think.
Deep research on individual companies and asset classes: mineral royalties, airport infrastructure, pipeline corridors, timber, land, and permanent capital allocators. Written to be updated for decades, not replaced next quarter.
Essay-style commentary built around one major theme and three to five case studies. No price targets. No short-term calls. A clear-eyed look at where we see durable value in a world that mostly rewards fragility.
The quiet compounders: companies that shrink their share count, build balance-sheet fortresses, and let the per-share math do the talking over decades. Stories hiding in plain sight because nobody frames them correctly.
Occasional pieces on monetary history, inflation regimes, and the Austrian-school capital structure perspective that informs our research. Published when warranted, not on a calendar.
The Research Letter · Published on Substack
Asset dossiers, the quarterly letter, capital-allocation journals, and regime memos, delivered as we publish them. No trading calls, no noise. For people who'd rather understand what they own.
You'll continue to Substack to confirm your subscription. Unsubscribe anytime. Informational and educational only; not investment advice.
Plainly
No jargon unless we explain it. No complexity for its own sake. If we cannot explain an investment over a fence line, we have not understood it well enough to publish research on it.
Honestly
If we are wrong, we will say so. If we do not know, we will say that too. The margin of safety exists because we are human, not despite it.
For the long term
Every piece is written for a reader who plans to own the asset for a decade or more. If that horizon makes you uncomfortable, we are probably not for you. If it makes you relax, welcome.
The concrete is curing. The herd is building. We intend to be patient.
Mike Meixler
Founder · Permanent Capital Research
Permanent Capital Research is a separate investment research company. We study assets that outlive regimes: royalties, real property, scarce economic rights, and durable infrastructure that depletes, produces, or stores value through full market cycles.
Permanent Capital Research and Meixler Investment Management, Ltd. are under common ownership and maintain a business relationship. Permanent Capital Research provides investment research and does not manage client accounts on behalf of Meixler Investment Management.
Our research emphasizes replacement cost and per-share compounding. We respect monetary history without trying to forecast it. And we think like owners, not traders.
Questions about our research or publications? Email mike@permanentcapitalresearch.com.
For investment advisory services, contact Meixler Investment Management, Ltd., a separate company under common ownership with Permanent Capital Research. Any advisory relationship arising from this contact is with Meixler Investment Management, not Permanent Capital Research.